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Friday, October 20, 2006

Porter Square Books: A Success Story.

Since its inception two years ago “Porter Square Books,” in Porter Square, right on the border of Somerville, Mass. and Cambridge, Mass., has become an integral part of the literary community and the community in general. It has become a hub for readings, events, meetings, and even great coffee from its café, presided over by the ever cheerful Rachel, the manager.

The staff, Dale Szczeblowski, managing director, Carol Stoltz ( Children’s Department Manager), Jane Dawson ( Personnel Manager), told me that they view their enterprise as a success—their criteria?—sales of course! The dynamic trio feels that people are still discovering the store—and when they do they realize it is a top shelf organization. All three are far from wet-behind-the-ears; with extensive experience in the book biz. So the store isn’t a “gee-whiz let’s put on a show”affair.

Ellen Jarrett, the event planner, has attracted local, as well as nationally known talent to read at the store. Some of the readers who have graced the bookstore’s stage are Claire Messud, ( “The Emperor’s Children), Ed Viestries, ( a Mt. Everest mountain climber), poet Richard Hoffman, Ellen Kushner, to name just a few.

The store has community outreach. They often bring authors out to local schools, they host parties ( notably the reception for the Somerville News Writers Festival—5:30PM Nov. 12), the editorial meetings of the local Cambridge newspaper “The Alewife,” and schedule book signings for local presses like: “Ebb Tide,” “sunnyoutside,” and others. In the poetry section the shelves stacked with local poets such as: Patricia Brodie, Martha Collins, Marc Widershien, Steven Cramer, John Hildebidle, and many others.

Dale Szczeblowski, a onetime jazz musician, has started a Pop Culture section, as well as a service that rents cds and tapes.

All three folks agreed that the physical book is far from dead. They have been surprised that many of the under 30 crowd are still hungrily devouring tomes. And be reminded…Porter Square can order and deliver books the goods at least as fast as Amazon.com Porter Square Books is a very nice alternative to the increasingly impersonal world of commerce.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

If I had to describe “A Night in November” in a few words; I would say it is about a man in a cage. He is trapped by his past, by his petty bureaucratic job, by the entrenched divide between Protestant and Catholic Ireland.

“A Night In November,” written by Marie Jones, is a one man show. The one man, who plays 26 characters, including the protagonist Kenneth McAllister, is the actor Marty Maguire. McAllister is a low level welfare officer living in the Protestant section of Belfast. For his 40 years he has been towing the line. He moves through his carefully choreographed life like a drugged out cipher. He outwardly accepts the racist, bigoted, and hateful doggerel that is dished out by members of his “tribe,” against the Catholics living on the wrong side of the tracks.

McAllister however is starting to crack under the strain. Maguire brilliantly portrays the breakdown of this corseted man, who eventually bursts through the stranglehold of a preordained life. The sweat pours down the character’s face, he screams in rage, as he rails against the stifling bonds of family, friends and job. Maguire's portrayal of McAllister can only be described as a portrait of a raging force of nature. It is a performance of Shakespearian proportions.

Maguire fleshes out the 26 characters expertly, capturing the tics and textures of each and every one. From a wizened old sod of a father-in-law, to an in-your-face New York cop, Maguire is on the money.

In the second act McAllister embarks on a trip to New York City to witness the “World Cup,” and gains a new perspective on life. The director, Tim Byron Owen, told me during intermission that he strived to bring a universal sensibility to the production. He wanted it to be more than an “Irish” play. And indeed, Kenneth McAllister is an everyman. He is an everyman who has a mind. He is an everyman who stops to question his own existence during his all too brief time on this stage.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Memories of the past haunt us. Sometimes we try to drown them with booze, drugs, or we leave to get a pack of “Camels” and never return. Nick Flynn, acclaimed poet and writer (and our featured reader at the “Somerville News Writers Festival”, was not able to escape his past, or in a word…his father. In Nick Flynn’s visceral and evocative memoir “Another Bullshit Night In Suck City,” Flynn can’t only escape the memory of his ner-do-well, booze-soaked father, but his flesh and blood father haunts the streets of Boston where Flynn lives, and at times the downtrodden dad is a denizen of the “Pine St. Inn,” a homeless shelter that Flynn was employed by. His father fancied himself a writer, and may indeed have had latent talent, but it rarely saw the light of day. Flynn, a poet first, has infused a wonderful sense of lyricism in many of the passages written about his father. He conveys the love, and hate, for a man who was a stranger to himself, and his son.

One of Flynn’s primal fears was that he would end up like his father—a man with a rapidly fading fantasy of the writing life, holed up in a cheap furnished room in a Beacon Hill rooming house—or worse yet sleeping on the grates in front of the Boston Public Library. In this passage, Flynn writes about seeing his homeless father walking the streets:

“Sometimes I’d see my father walking past my building on his way to nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. A futon. A bed. But I never did. If I let him inside I would become him, the line between would speed up. The slogan on the side of a moving company truck read: “Together we are going Places—modified by a vandal or disgruntled employee to read: “Together we are going Down.” If I went to the drowning man the drowning man would pull me under. I couldn’t be his life raft.” (11)

Flynn was well aware that he was traveling the same perilous road as his father. For years, like his father, he fancied himself a writer, but he was starting to succumb to his own demons: drugs, drink and the cage of a worthy but dead end job at the shelter. Flynn writes:

“I’m fast becoming the one who leaves things behind, who blows a rod and pulls into the breakdown lane and unscrews the plate and walks. Who puts his stuff in your basement and never returns. Who steps out onto a sidewalk in a small city, into the stifling car, without his shoes, without remembering he was even wearing shoes; or even wore shoes.” (118)

With the help of a therapist, Fynn managed to get out of the hole he was fast sinking in, and was able to get enough insight into himself, and the burden of his fallen father to move on. In a letter from his father’s friend, Flynn gains insight into his father’s futile charade, which eventually leads Flynn to get his own act together.

“I always felt your father didn’t like himself a lot, that he had a self-destructive side wider than most. That he carried around a sense of failure. You kids were an important part of his life, he would read to me the letters he wrote you, yet it always seemed like he was punishing himself for his failures as a father. Eventually he made a business of being a failure—if he was close to success he would sabotage it. The one role he held on to was that of being a great undiscovered writer—it allowed him to lash out in anger, it became his job to straighten the world out, to point to exactly how he’d been mistreated. The art world allowed him to get away with extravagant and excessive behavior, it encouraged it. His life became a raging performance, piece scripted by Jonathan Flynn. This allowed him to stay in control of something in his life. It became all presentation.”

Not all of us would have the strength to pull out of this maw of despair. Flynn did—and in a way realized his father’s dreams.

Cape Cod Writers Conference August 6 to 9, 2015

( Click on picture for more info) "Enjoy summer on the Cape while improving your writing skills! Attend the 53rd Cape Cod Writers Center Conference, August 6-9 at the Resort and Conference Center at Hyannis. Register for one day or the entire weekend. Choose from thirty classes and workshops with distinguished authors, editors, agents, mentors, and media experts, including keynote speakers Marge Piercy and Claire Cook. To register click on http://bit.ly/1AxusHv. For more information call (508) 420-0200 or write to writers@capecodwriterscenter.org.

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur : 1974 to 1983 by Doug Holder

(To order click on picture) “Doug Holder is a poet of the old city, the city of our fathers, of the 1950s and later. Mr. Holder writes poems like notes in a diary. I found myself struck by their economy, wit, and urban melancholy... He has a voice unlike that of any of his contemporaries. Holder is a poet of the street and coffeehouses, an observer of the everyday. He writes of old Marxists, security guards and his relationship to his deceased father—themes of the common life. I am drawn to these poems as I am to the poetry of Philip Levine and the prose of James T. Farrell. But Holder’s poetry is deeper than that. He sees the world not for what it is, but on his own terms. He is living in the poem rather than in poetry.” ~ Sam Cornish, First Boston Poet Laureate

Portrait of An Artist as a Young Poseur by Doug Holder (Order on paypal.com)

Midway Journal Poetry Contest!

(Click on pic for more details!) Step right up! Midway Journal is accepting submissions now through May 31 for the "Monstrosities of the Midway" literary contest. Entry fee is $15. Grand prize is $1,000 and publication in Midway Journal. Dorianne Laux will judge. For complete contest details, please visit www.midwayjournal.com/contest

OH Don't ,She Said..a poem/song project

( Preview and Purchase--click on pic) Oh Don’t, She Said ~ by Jennifer Matthews. Jennifer wrote this song after her friend and notable poet, Doug Holder, showed her his poem: “Oh don’t, she said, it’s cold.” After reading it, Jennifer felt inspired and heard a song in it. She had to change some of the words to make it work lyrically with the music, but she made sure to stay close to the original poem as much as possible. Jennifer played all the instruments on it and engineered it. It was mixed by Phil Greene at Normandy Sound, who worked with the likes of Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and many, many other noted artists. Doug wrote it after a conversation he had with his mother while riding on a train to New York City. It is dedicated to her, Rita Holder. Genre: Rock: Acoustic Release Date: 2014

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So Spoke Penelope by Tino Villanueva

(Click on picture to order now!) "An intense poetic hovering over a situation of prolonged expectation....The poems in SO SPOKE PENELOPE are simply amazing, whether in the form of an apostrophe to the absent Odysseus or to the Gods, whether in a narrative past-tense mode or in the immediacy of the lived present, whether in the staccato of monosyllables or in the exuberance of unusual compounds, whether they employ Greek-feeling pentameter lines, alliteration, or anaphora. This poetic cycle shows that the whole range of human experience is contained in Penelope of Ithaca."—Werner Sollors

Visitors from around the country and world...( Click on real time view for complete list)

New From Muddy River Books: Eating Grief at 3AM" by Doug Holder

(To order click on picture) “There is a sad, sweet nostalgia in Holder’s Eating Grief at 3 AM, a sense of loss and sadness for the places and the people who were a part of those scenes: the hunchback, the Tennessee Williams’ half lost blondes, the turbaned men and the discarded move nostalgically through life. Yet Holder finds something almost like beauty or knowledge in the abandoned warehouses with weeds crawling to the roof. He imagines when Mrs. Plant, an old art teacher, was an enigmatic young woman ‘feverishly taking notes about the paintings, a love note stuffed in a pocket of her winter coat.’ There are always dreams, even if never fulfilled. There is so often the sense of time passing, of letting go-- letting go of people, letting go of Harvard Square Theater and the Wursthaus, balms that seemed like they would always be there. And they are and always will be in Holder’s moving poems.” — Lyn Lifshin, Author of Cold Comfort (Black Sparrow Press) "

Visitors from around the country and world...

Elizabeth Lund Interviews Doug Holder-Founder of the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

(Click on picture for interview)

With Robert Lowell and his Circle by Kathleen Spivack

(Click on image to order the book) "Please join us for the book launch, Sunday , December 2, 2012--4 to 6 P.M. Co-sponsored by UPNE, the Harvard Bookstore & the Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Cambridge, MA. Short presentation, lots of refreshments. In 1959, Kathleen Spivack won a fellowship to study at Boston University with Robert Lowell. Her fellow students were Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, among others. The book looks at the work of poetry, as well as lifelong friendships, despair, addiction, perseverance and survival, and at how social changes altered lives and circumstances. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, this memoir illuminates the lives and thoughts of some of the most influential artists of the twentieth century."

Please donate to the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene- keep us alive!

(Click on Picture to order) "Starting with Allen Ginsberg and ending with Charlie Parker, Sam Cornish takes us on a whirlwind tour of some of the livelier segments of 1950s and early ’60s American culture. With non-stop energy, syncopated rhythms, and a fast pace that keeps you humming as you turn the pages, Cornish visits a wide array of writers, musicians, and films, stopping along the way to visit local poetry scenes and pay tribute to the homeless and poor. Calling on Jack Kerouac, Langston Hughes, Marlon Brando, Miles Davis and a host of others, Cornish makes us feel the excitement of those times, even as he and his companions absorb the complex and often disturbing history of what he aptly calls “My Young America.” — Martha Collins

Advertise with us! ( Read what people are saying about the Blog) ibbetsonpress@msn.com

click on pic for more info..... Rusty Barnes ( Night Train magazine) "Doug. I know your reviewers have made a difference to me and my work. Keep up the good work". J.L. Morin ( Lecturer at Boston University/ Library Review) "That's a lovely blog you've got there, Doug Holder." ( Sherill Tippins--"Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel.") " I love your introduction, and fervently hope that Somerville never meets anything like the Chelsea Hotel's fate. It's always a pleasure to read your blog -- even when I'm not in it!" Alan Kaufman ( Editor of the "Outlaw Bible of American Literature")-- " ...a terrific blog..." Perry Glasser--( Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award): " The blog is very impressive." Elizabeth Swados ( Tony Nominated Playwright, Guggenheim Award Winner ): "Thanks you so much for this review on your blog. It helps so much, not just in terms of getting people to know that it exists, but also makes me feel that someone has gotten what I have tried to do. I wish you the very best." Marguerite G. Bouvard, PhD-- Resident Scholar Women's Research Center-Brandeis University: " I love reading your blog. What a refreshing respite from the New York Times. Thanks for all you do for poetry." Ed Hamilton--author of "Legends of the Chelsea Hotel" commenting on Chelsea Hotel article: " That's a great piece. Thanks for sending the link along." Richard Moore-- Finalist/T.S.Eliot Prize " I have just read your wonderful interview of the wonderful Eric Greinke!" Steven Ford Brown (Former Director of Research for the George Plimpton Interview Series "The Writer in America"): " You did a great job with the Clayton Eshleman interview, especially the personal stuff. So much better than doing the dry talk about literary polemics." Celia Gilbert (Pushcart Prize in Poetry) "Doug thanks so much for that fine shout out. I'm delighted how you put it all together!" Karen Alkalay-Gut, PhD ( Professor of English-Tel Aviv University) "Doug, I enjoy your posts immensely" Lise Haines ( Writer-in-Residence, Emerson College-Boston) "I love your blog!" "( Elizabeth Searle- Executive Board/Pen New England) : "Like your blog. I like the interview with Rick Moody." Ploughshares Staff- " Everyone at Ploughshares is a big fan of your blog." Suzanne Wise (Publicity Director Poets House-NYC): "Thank you so much for this wonderfully thoughtful portrait of our new home! You really "get us" and you translate that understanding vividly. I love the way you talk about Stanley's ( Kunitz) giant dictionary as a relic from another age. We're glad to preserve such relics." Kathleen Bitetti ( Chief Curator Medicine Wheel Productions/ Former Director of the Artists Foundation--Boston.) " Love your interview with Marc Zegans...wonderful blog!"

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Ibbetson Street is now in a partnership with Endicott College!

(Click on to go to the Endicott College Website)Ibbetson will be supported in part and formally affiliated with Endicott College.

The Arts and Literature in Somerville, Mass.: Off the Shelf with Doug Holder

( Click on picture to go to column) A weekly column in The Somerville News--Somerville's only independent newspaper!

The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 13, 2010

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ISCS PRESS--WE WILL PUBLISH YOUR BOOK!

Boston's leading co-publisher... (Click on title for more information)

The Boston Globe: Poetic Healing at McLean Hospital

This was the lead article in the Living/Arts section of the Boston Globe. (Feb. 2000) It has to do with Doug Holder's poetry workshops at McLean Hospital and the history of this literary landmark. (Click on pic for full article)

(Click on picture to view) A Production of Somerville Community Access TV's show " Poet to Poet : Writer to Writer." Moderator: Gloria Mindock, Producer: Doug Holder, Director: Bill Barrell

"The Paris of New England" Interviews with Poets and Writers" by Doug Holder

( Click on pic to order this and other Ibbetson Press titles) Interviews with poets and writers from the Paris of New England Somerville, Mass. " Thank you for your interview book. I read it straight through last night and enjoyed it very much...So many good ideas in one book." Eric Greinke-- Presa Press "Very engrossing collection of Holder's interviews, with a wide range of writers about their lives and work. Included are Mike Basinski, Mark Doty, Robert Creeley, Ed Sanders, Hugh Fox, Robert K. Johnson, and Pagan Kennedy.-- Chiron Review

Advertise with a popular online and print literary column in the heart of the Paris of New England

Reach a wide swath of the Boston Area literary community through The Somerville News' "Off the Shelf" literary Column with Doug Holder. The column is online and in a weekly print edition that reaches 15,000 readers. For more information click on picture.

Grolier Poetry Book Shop

" Poetry is honored every day at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square, the oldest continuous poetry book shop in the United States. We stock over 15,000 volumes and spoken word CD's. Special orders are welcome. Come and visit us at 6 Plympton St. or online http://grolierpoetrybookshop.org (click on picture)

YOUR AD CAN BE HERE ( Click on pic for more info)

Doug Holder/ Founder/ Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene: Advertise with a popular Boston Area Literary Site--For Low rates-- Contact: dougholder@post.harvard.edu 617-628-2313

Poetry Workshops With Doug Holder

( Click on Picture for Doug Holder's website) Doug Holder has led poetry workshops, both for indviduals and groups for a decade now. Robert Olen Butler ( Pulitzer Prize Winner for Literature) wrote of Holder's work: " I've been greatly enjoying your poems. You have a major league talent, man." Available for individual or groups. Expert in gently helping the novice into poetry and the poetry scene. Reasonable Rates. Available for editing. Call 617-628-2313 for more information. Or email: dougholder@post.harvard.edu

Ibbetson Street Press

No One Dies at the Au Bon Pain by Doug Holder

Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From The Back Bay to the Back Ward by Doug Holder

A poetry collection that deals with Boston, and Holder's experiences working on the psychiatric units at McLean Hospital

Of All the Meals I Had Before by Doug Holder

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The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel (To order click on picture)

A new poetry book by Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene Founder, Doug Holder. "I'm enjoying 'The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel' -- perfect poems, especially in that ambiance." Dan Tobin -- Director of Creative Writing--Emerson College-Boston, Mass./ " It is quintessential Holder& bristles with sardonic wit. Congratulations."-- Eric Grienke (founder of Presa Press) / " I finished "The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel'...greatly enjoyed the menagerie of characters and imperfect human beings I met along the way. Excellent work Doug!"-- Paul Steve Stone ( Creative Director W.B.Mason and the autthor of "Or So It Seems.") / "I am reminded in the pages of this collection of meeting, a year or two before her death, the artist Alice Neel, who painted gorgeously surreal ironic portraits of famous and ordinary people in the 1930's and 40's--and shivering as she looked me over. Doug Holder looks at the world through a similarly sharp and amused set of eyes...Rich nuggets of humor and wry reflection throughout this collection." Pamela Annas ( Asst. Dean of Humanities U/Mass Boston/Reviewer Midwest Book Review) “....particularly liked The Tunnel—a little masterpiece!” Kathleen Spivack ( Permanent Visiting Professor of Creative Writing/American Literature at the University of Paris) "I want to tell you this was just about the best chap I ever read, I absolutely DEVORED it..."--( Robin Stratton--Boston Literary Magazine) "An acclaimed Boston-area poet writes about characters who have captured his interest over the years -- a colonial dame with purple hair, a postal worker ready to be returned to his sender, J. Edgar Hoover's secret love -- in this skillfull collection of short, free form poems." (Perkins School of the Blind Website) Click on picture to access Cervena Barva Press

About Me

Doug Holder is the founder of the independent literary press Ibbetson Street. He teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. He is the arts/editor of The Somerville News, and for the past twenty years has run poetry groups at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. His poetry and prose have appeared in the Bay State Banner, The Boston Globe, The Boston Globe Magazine, Rattle, Endicott Review, Long Island Quarterly, Toronto Quarterly and many others. He holds an M.A. in Literature from Harvard University.

Poems From The Left Bank: Somerville, Mass. by Doug Holder

( Click on picture to order) "The poems are full of life, witty and sympathetic and sharp all at once. And most of all, full of an engaged affection for the place and people. If Burns is Scotland's Bard, you are certainly Somerville's..." Kate Chadbourne, PhD ( Lecturer-Harvard University-Celtic Languages and Literature)

From The Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers" by Doug Holder

(Click on picture to order) Interviews by Doug Holder from the Paris of New England: Somerville, Mass. "I am impressed. A lot of great interviews compiled over the years."-- Brian Morrisey--Poesy Magazine / " A very engrossing read..."--Chiron Review / "Doug Holder knows how to ask important questions"--New Pages

Advertise with the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene.

Doug Holder founder says: "Reach a wide audience of poets, writers, editors and publishers, Have your ad linked to your site. The Boston area Small Press and Poetry Scene is well known in the small press community..." For information about rates, etc...email: dougholder@post.harvard.edu or call 617-628-2313